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How to Change the Operating System on a Vultr Bare Metal Instance

Updated on November 27, 2024

Changing the instance operating system wipes all data on your server and installs a new file system. This is important when changing your default operating system while maintaining your instance's IP networking information.

Follow this guide to change the operating system on a Vultr Cloud Compute instance using the Vultr Customer Portal, API, or CLI.

  • Vultr Customer Portal
  • Vultr API
  • Vultr CLI

  1. Navigate to Products and click Compute.

    Navigate to Products in the Vultr Customer Portal

  2. Click your target Bare Metal instance to open its management page.

    Open the Instance management panel

  3. Navigate to the Settings tab.

    Navigate to the settings tab

  4. Click Change OS on the left navigation menu.

    Select the Change OS menu option

  5. Click the OS drop-down to select a new operating system and the default RAID configuration.

    Change Bare Metal OS

  6. Click Change OS to apply the new operating system.

  7. Check the confirmation prompt and click Change OS to reinstall the instance with a new operating system.

    Bare Metal Change OS confirmation prompt

  1. Send a GET request to the List Bare Metal Instances endpoint and note the target instance's ID.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/bare-metals" \
  -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}"

  2. Send a GET request to the List OS endpoint to view all available operating systems and note the target OS ID.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/os" \
  -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}"

  3. Send a PATCH request to the Update Bare Metal endpoint with a new os_id value to change the instance's operating system.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/bare-metals/{baremetal-id}" \
  -X PATCH \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "os_id" : "<new-instance-os-id>"
  }'

  1. List all Bare Metal instances in your Vultr account and note the target instance's ID.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli bare-metal list

  2. List all available operating systems and note the target OS ID.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli bare-metal os list <baremetal-id>

  3. Change the target instance's operating system.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli bare-metal os change <instance-id> --os <os_id>